[LINK] Student Data being sold to advertisers: US

[Tom Worthington]

On 22/01/14 17:52, Jan Whitaker wrote:

> ... Google ... Microsoft ... accounts ... schools in Australia ...
> analysis as to the legality ...

If advertisements are displayed alongside the student's email and other
materials on-line, is this an invasion of privacy? If the ads were
displayed on the physical wall of the classroom, then I think parents
would be justified in being worried by that. So it seems reasonable to
object to ads in the virtual classroom.

If advertisers use private information to market to students, is that a
breech of privacy? The marketer could argue that their staff never see
the details of any individual student and the computer programs which do
are not people, so there is no breech. However, I am not sure that would
meet the requirements of the Commonwealth Privacy Act, which schools,
vocational institutions and universities in Australia are, in general,
subject to.

Nathan Croot, Emil Ford Lawyers has produced a paper on "Practical
Privacy Issues for Schools:
http://www.emilford.com.au/page.asp?id=74&pv=%AB%A8



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Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
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Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science,
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